


It's All Been Done Before

by end_alls



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Gen, TWEWY Spoilers, neku and joshua's relationship remains fraught, oh how the turntables
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2021-01-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 12,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25055086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/end_alls/pseuds/end_alls
Summary: Re: “This mess is gonna have repercussions upstairs.”A year after the events of TWEWY, after receiving judgement for his actions by the Higher Ups, Joshua is dropped back in Shibuya, reverted to the way he was before his first Game. Neku, having spent this year acting as Proxy (a stand-in authority who keeps the Game functioning in the absence of a Composer), is predictably uncool with this, and resolves to jog Joshua’s memory and get him back to the way he was so that Joshua can resume his role of Composer but mostly so Neku can yell at him.
Comments: 32
Kudos: 110





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This version of Joshua is based on the thing he says in Week 2 about being able to see the Game while he was alive, and presumably going to Mr. H to talk about it.
> 
> If you read See You In Shibuya you’ll know that I was like “god I can’t put Joshua in here or it’d triple the length of this thing” so instead of over-complicating things, he spent that whole story locked up in heaven while the Higher Ups deliberated his punishment.
> 
> Still, I did have plans for how I wanted to play around with him in a post-TWEWY story, so here it is! I haven’t yet decided if I want to put it this in the SYIS-verse as a sequel story, but it might just be that I end up focusing solely on TWEWY stuff for clarity’s sake. 
> 
> ALSO WANTED TO GET THIS WRITTEN BEFORE THE TWEWY ANIME OVERTAKES MY MIND AND SOUL
> 
> Fic title is from the lyrics of "Someday" from the OST!

Souls came from below. Never above.

When the Angels that ruled reality from the Higher Planes delivered it to them, Neku didn’t ask whose it was. It called to his wings, to the core of his own Soul, and he would have known it anywhere, in any form it took.

It had other names, probably, but he had only ever called it one.

“Joshua.”

Well, maybe he’d called it a few more names than that.

Kariya pulled the lollipop from his mouth to speak up beside him. “They sure have a fun sense of humor, don’t They?”

The soul before them was a tangle of information in the form of interlocking graffiti-like sigils, humming quietly in sleep. Neku recognized this shape too, though he’d never seen it in white. It was the same form Players took before they were reconstructed and woken from stasis on the cold concrete of the Game.

The Higher Ups had given him the shape of a Player.

Which meant They expected him to play.

Was this what passed for a sentence? Play out a Game in the form of one of your own powerless Players to prove you deserved to reclaim your throne? And if he made it to the end—

“So what’s the plan, boss?”

“How are we supposed to run it? With him in it?”

“We’ve been running the Games fine for the past year,” Kariya replied cooly, though he was now staring blankly at the lollipop being twirled between his fingers. “Mr. Proxy.”

Neku wanted to come up with another reason to protest. Something less childish than _But I can’t._

“Why now?” Neku scrubbed his fingernail across the buttons of the MP3 player around his neck, trying to feel real. “A year later?”

“As if They’re ever in any rush.”

Neku’s eyes traced the part of the sigil that shone brighter than the rest of it—the burning thread through a soul that made up an Entry Fee—and found that he could read it like a palm reader reads the creases on skin. He understood what it would be.

“What’s the point if he won’t even know he’s being punished?” Neku said, unable to unclench his jaw. “That’s what this is supposed to be, right? Punishment?”

“Not to tell tales out of school, but…” Kariya said, “…if I didn’t know any better, I’d think They were trying to punish all of us.”

That was something Neku could believe. It’d been a year since his Game had ended, a year since Joshua had rewritten reality to restore the lives of a few at the cost of his service to the many, a year since he’d vanished with not so much as a text message, and a year since Neku had been scripted back into the Game to serve as Proxy for Shibuya’s Composer while the Higher Ups deliberated, powerless to do anything but keep the Game on its same rails, with its same rules, until They saw fit to return their hostage.

It was a year spent dreaming of the moment he’d see Joshua again, the day when he could scream at him for everything he’d done and then ball his fists in his perfect shirt so that he’d never be able to leave them again.

“I’m appointing you as GM,” Neku said.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“If I’m the one he pacts with, we’ll be able to find out what They did to him.”

Kariya blew out a breath. “So, a Composer stand-in partnering with the Player he put in the Game? And that’s different from what he did to you… how, exactly?”

Neku didn’t answer that.

“Look, just hold off on entering him until we have a few more Players,” Kariya said. “Then he can go in with them.” His eyes fell on the soul again. “…Looks pretty messed up to me anyway, Phones. I wouldn’t count on much of him being left.”

“No. He’s in there.” He had to be. Even if the Higher Ups had wiped him clean, erased him of everything that mattered, there had to be _something_ Neku could find and drag out, kicking and screaming if he had to, because Joshua needed to know why. When Neku got the chance to yell at him until his throat was raw, Joshua needed to know _why._

“You’re technically my boss and all, so I’ll do it, but I reserve full and absolute authority to say ‘I told you so’ when this thing blows up in your face.”

“Fine.”

“And you know you still have to pony up an Entry Fee, right?”

“Yeah.” Neku clenched his fists until his fingernails dug into his palms. “Yeah, I know.”

———————

“Hey. Wake up.”

The voice scratched his skull like a bow across the strings of a violin, and Joshua’s eyes strained against the light as he tried to will them into focus. His muscles felt like they’d been stretched too long and then knitted to fit back inside him, and now someone was trying to get him to _move?_ Not likely.

After a few more blinks, the form above him materialized, silhouetted by the bright sky. It was another teenager, sporting obnoxiously-dyed orange hair with spikes that probably took at least a good half hour of maintenance every morning. All that time in the mirror would probably be better spent practicing facial expressions, because the teen seemed to have _no idea_ how you were supposed to look at strangers. The combination of wild, conflicted eyes above pursed lips set in a hard line would typically elicit an “Excuse me, can I help you?” from him in any normal situation, but this didn’t seem to be a normal situation.

He had no idea how he got here, why he was lying in what appeared to be a busy crosswalk, why he hurt so much, or why this teenager appeared to be the only one who’d stopped to check on him. But those were each cards he knew he couldn’t play all at once if he expected to receive any help without also getting directed back towards a marching precession of medial professionals, so instead he said, “How long do you plan to keep looking at me like that? Is my face just that bewitching?”

The stranger’s mouth twisted then, almost like he was about to cry, but mercifully all he did was hold out his hand, palm up. It looked dirty, like he’d gotten ink on it. Joshua thought the teen must be out of his mind to think that he’d take it, but even as the thought came, he found that he was already reaching out to grasp the outstretched hand.

As the teen pulled him up, he winced at a new pain on his palm. Did he have a cut?

His hand was quickly released, and he turned his palm up to examine it.

_57:14_

A black timer was imprinted on his skin, singed with red and ticking ever downwards. Joshua stared at it, trying to determine its purpose and place within all the other unknowns he was trying to sort through. The pieces were beginning to line up, like glasses on a counter.

“Don’t you have anything else to say?” the teen said like he’d just eaten something sour.

Joshua looked back at him, eyes combing through his expression to find out what he’d already done to offend him. Joshua was used to offending people, but knowing _what_ he’d done was always helpful to navigate the fallout. It was easy to imagine things it could have been—the stranger’s face was profoundly teaseable, something he wanted to watch squirm like a bug beneath a magnifying glass.

But after matching the presence of the timer to the fact of the two of them standing in the middle of a bustling crosswalk with no one giving them so much as a sideways glance, Joshua was quickly approaching the conclusion that unless he had something insulting written on his face, this other teenager’s behavior might not be directed at him so much as at the situation in general.

The conclusions he’d reached were: the two of them were dead, the two of them had entered the Game, and if the two of them were to survive, then introductions were in order.

“It seems as if we’ve gotten ourselves into quite the predicament.”

“Seems that way.” The other teen was astoundingly calm for someone who’d presumably just been told he was dead, unless he’d also missed whatever passed for orientation and was waiting for someone else to explain it to him. Regardless, it didn’t seem as if he was going to offer anything up unless someone pressed him for it.

“Are you going to introduce yourself?” Joshua nudged.

“You first.” He commended the Player being so guarded. It meant he’d be less likely to make stupid mistakes.

“My name is Yoshiya Kiryu." The Player stared at him like he was supposed to go on, but he would find that Joshua could be just as guarded, if not more. “And you?”

“Neku Sakuraba.” He enunciated his name strangely, like he was making sure the syllables could be heard clearly.

“Then it’s a pleasure, Sakuraba.”

The eyes that Neku had been using to drill tiny holes into his face finally closed, and he turned away. “Enough small talk.” If this was what Neku called “small talk”, then the two of them were in for some thrilling conversations in the week to come. “We need to form a pact with each other to fight the Noise.”

“And here I thought you were still hovering just because you were concerned for my wellbeing.”

The eyes were back, sharper than before, and wet like a bloody knife being run under a tap. “Do you accept my pact?”

Neku was going to be more difficult to tease than he thought. “…Yes. I accept.”

A light burst from his chest, unspooling to reach a similar light that had come from Neku’s. As each light eclipsed the other, sliding together like lenses, he felt a tether form between them, a magnification of both their spirits. Joshua knew his was bright, but something about Neku’s seemed hotter, vaster, like the flares around a sun.

Joshua’s luck seemed to be improving, because as far as Partners went, Neku seemed to be quite the catch. He thought that perhaps being dead wouldn’t be so bad, just before a darker thought rose up to shadow and settle across his heart.

He wasn't alive.

The truth of it disseminated in him like sunlight through city smog.

Hadn’t he wanted this?

A playful flirtation, maybe—a brush enough with Death to make him feel alive.

He wasn't alive.

“Hey!”

Joshua jumped, snapping and reeling his thoughts back from inconvenient places. He spotted what Neku had indicated.

A Noise sigil had appeared nearby, and was drifting threateningly closer. A slideshow of memory began in his mind, of watching those symbols materialize and congregate, buzzing just outside the reality that everyone else could see. Of monsters made of ink that rended ghosts with wounds of static instead of blood.

“Joshua!”

The symbol had them in their radius now, and a screech ground through his teeth as Joshua was folded and shifted into another plane of reality tucked somewhere between the living and the dead. The Noise, now transfigured into the form of a grey wolf, had drawn them into a battleground of its own design.

“Sakuraba?” Joshua looked around. Neku wasn’t there. Surely the Noise had shifted him too? Joshua sidestepped just in time as the wolf charged him, fangs bared.

“Shit,” he hissed, fumbling for his pockets. From what he’d seen, Players fought with small objects charged with psychic power. His fingers curled around a rectangular object, and he produced an orange cell phone. Was this his? As he flipped it open, it sent a jolt up his arm that left his head prickling. Holding it in his hand, he could feel the links it shared with the city, with objects that lines the Shibuya street.

He wasn’t fast enough. The wolf lunged again, this time knocking him to the ground and sending his phone clattering away on the concrete. Pinned by claws digging into his shoulder, he had the distant thought that the wolf had probably torn through the sleeve of his shirt. But as is its jaw opened to reveal what seemed like an excessive amount of teeth, the wolf suddenly burst, flickering out into formless static that dissipated above him.

Another plane shift began, and soon spit them back onto the crosswalk where they’d woken. Joshua remained stationary as he slowly raised the arm that hurt _less_ to his shoulder to evaluate the damage. He couldn’t speak for whatever bruising he’d have shortly, but everything seemed intact.

The orange cell phone appeared in his field of vision, proffered by Neku, who seemed unfazed by just having erased a wolf Noise in seconds and without any help from him. His Partner was proving to be more impressive all the while.

“Thank you.”

“No problem.”

Joshua took the phone, and sat up. It was a newer model than the one he remembered—orange instead of the slate grey of his last one. He flipped it open to find an unread message from “The Reapers”: _Reach 104. You have 60 minutes. Fail, and face erasure._ He checked in on his timer. They still had more than around 50 minutes to get there, yet the 104 building was only a block or so away. Would all objectives be this easy? He closed the phone, and pocketed it.

“You called me Joshua,” he said.

“I guess.” Neku buried his nose in the large collar that ringed his shirt.

Joshua smirked up at him. “It’s what my parents call me. I didn’t think we’d get so familiar so soon… Neku.”

“If you’ve still got the energy to snark at me, then let’s get moving.”

“Why rush?” Joshua smoothed out his shirt. “If that text message is to be believed, we’ve still got almost an hour to complete the mission.”

Neku’s brow furrowed, though his mouth was still hidden in the depths of his collar. “What do you know about the Game? Weren’t you asleep?”

Joshua’s lips quirked, trying to feel out where this line of questioning intended to lead. “Weren’t you?”

Neku’s confusion shifted into a glare. “They explained it to me.”

“Who, pray tell?”

“The Reapers.”

“Well,” Joshua said, “then they surely told me everything they told you.” He helped himself up, before training his eyes on Neku. “Unless there’s something you’re not telling me…?”

“Nothing.” The word was abrupt, like a sudden wrong turn into a lamp post.

So the Reapers had told Neku about the Game, but not him. That meant they must have known he’d already been spying on it—watching Games play out from the living plane. He still would have appreciated some sort of crash-course, seeing as how it was one thing to watch the Game happen to other people, and an entirely different thing to be thrust into the the center of it yourself. Joshua turned towards Cat Street, wondering if they could make it to Mr. H’s cafe and back within the time limit.

“Say, Neku… how did you die?”

Neku’s posture went stiff. “A—gun,” he managed, through clenched teeth. Another strange twist of phrase, like the rest was being cut off.

“…Players give something up in order to play, yes?” Judging by all the gaps, Joshua could only assume his had something to do with his own memory, while Neku's might be something to do with the way he spoke. Unless he was always this averse to conversation. “What was yours?”

Neku’s jaw worked, but his lips didn’t open.

“Can’t say?” Joshua leaned toward him, head tilted coyly. “Or won’t?”

“Can’t.”

Joshua retreated, and shrugged. “Then I guess I don’t have any reason to tell you mine.”

Neku turned away from him, and took a step towards 104. “Whatever.”

“Neku, could I ask a teeny little favor?”

“What.” There was a sharp snap down on the _t._

“As illuminating as the Reapers might have been, I don’t think I’d be too far off-base to assume that you have a few more questions about how all this works.” Mr. H had denied him answers before, but he could hardly hold them back now that they pertained to his direct survival. “Lucky for us, I have a friend who runs a cafe just—”

“It’s closed.”

“What?”

“WildKat, right?” Neku went on, voice sharp enough to cut. “It’s been closed for a year now.”

Joshua stared at him, but he didn’t seem to be joking. By and large, Neku didn’t seem to be the joking type. Joshua certainly hadn’t crossed paths with him in the time since meeting Mr. H, but they were clearly close enough for him to know about Mr. H’s connections to the Game. Which begged the question of why Neku had been the one to be ghosted. “…Then you must have exceptionally bad timing. I visit at least once a week.”

Mr. H was known to keep odd hours, but always seemed to be around when Joshua needed someone to talk to. _Especially_ when he needed someone to talk to.

“He’s gone, Joshua. Gone like—” Another swerve. “Like the cafe is.”

“I visit at least once a week,” Joshua repeated, insulted. What was Neku playing at?

“We don’t have time to go all the way there and back within the limit, and I’m telling you, _he won’t be there.”_

Joshua let out a breath to tamp down the tangle of emotions rising in his chest. If he could pull up a navigation estimate on his phone, he’d be able to prove that they’d be back with minutes to spare if they left now, and _ran._ But this time when Joshua flipped open his phone, he noticed the date, and froze.

The year was wrong.

Joshua kept his eyes trained on the screen as his mind raced. Had his price to enter the Game been “time”? With the way he treated it—like a sluggish, poisonous thing that dulled his mind and choked his throat, something he wished would either move _faster_ or stop entirely—he couldn’t imagine it being considered precious enough to take.

But more than that, he’d let a contradiction slip between them, large enough to jeopardize whatever trust Neku might be fostering in him. Mr. H hadn’t told him everything he wanted about the Game, but one thing he’d said was this: _The key to the Game is trust. When trust is broken, that’s when Partners turn on each other. That’s when it can all go wrong.  
_

If Neku decided he was lying about this, then his Partner’s trust in him would become a frayed thread, easily broken by any lie to follow. They’d become harder to tell without the whole thing unraveling. Joshua knew that all too well.

“Are you coming or not?” Neku’s voice broke through his thoughts, not for the first time, and he chided himself for being so distractible today. Neku had his arms folded at the far end of the crosswalk, the threshold of 104 behind him. “It doesn’t count unless you’re with me.”

Joshua weighed a few more calculations, then decided that he couldn’t risk straining things any more today. He walked forward to join Neku, and the two of them entered the covered hall at the base of the 104 building. As they crossed, the ink of the timer—still with plenty of time to spare—lifted from their palms with a small shock, and Joshua turned his hand back and forth, examining it.“We could have at least gotten to know each other a little more.”

“We have a week.”

“Do you think they’ll deign to throw more than one Noise at us?”

“The first day’s supposed to be easy.”

Joshua put his hand in his pocket, fingers tracing the phone. He couldn’t be so slow tomorrow. “You didn’t even let me have a swipe at it.”

“It sure had a swipe at you.”

Joshua chuckled. “Was that a joke, Neku Sakuraba?”

Neku’s face had tucked itself into its collar again, but Joshua thought he could catch the edge of a smile.

But before he could take another step, a curtain of black closed over his vision, and a force at the base of his skull seemed to pull him backwards, down into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And then the DAY 1: CHAPTER CLOSED screen pops up
> 
> Joshua: constantly doing social calculus in his head no matter who or where he is  
> Neku: oh my god
> 
> Thanks for reading! If you want to tune into the yelling I'm most certainly going to be doing about the anime, my twitter is [toppiegames](https://twitter.com/toppiegames)!


	2. Day 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the [TWEWY countdown](https://www.jp.square-enix.com/7days/index.php) ending soon I figured I better get this chapter shipped out because after the clock ends who knows what’ll become of me
> 
> Enjoy!

Joshua woke, hovering for a few moments in the uncertain fog that laid between sleep and waking. He was heavy, like he’d been dreaming and the dream wasn’t yet ready to release him from its folds. If he had a pulse, it might have been thumping inside his ears or in the place the back of his head met the concrete he was lying on.

If he had a pulse.

The dregs of sleep were wrenched away.

He was dead.

He was in the Game.

And—this last thought sent him bolting upright—he’d been put to sleep somehow, right after they’d finished the first mission. His searching eyes immediately found Neku, who was crouched beside him, entirely unfazed and frowning at his phone.

“Look who’s awake,” Neku said, glancing up.

When Neku made no move to help him, Joshua raised himself to his elbows. “You could’ve woken me.” The two of them had been unceremoniously placed on an expanse of concrete outside Shibuya Station Plaza, near Hachiko. Like yesterday, crowds of the living passed through and around them, unaware of their presence. Joshua checked his palm for a timer. Nothing. So he hadn’t been wasting their time, asleep for some reason.

He pulled out his phone, and saw what Neku had likely been frowning at. The date had changed. Hadn’t they taken enough time from him already? Though, perhaps it made sense. The longer your Players were conscious, the more chances they had to cause trouble. Joshua, therefore, resolved to cause as much trouble as he could to make up the difference, then let out a small sigh, sat up completely, and crossed his legs.

“So Neku,” he said. “What’s your plan?”

Neku’s expression turned guarded, but Joshua thought his eyes held some light in them that might have been hope. “What plan?”

“Your plan to win the Game,” he smiled. “For a trial that’s placed our souls tenuously on the threshold between life and death, thus far you’ve been astoundingly _composed.”_

The edge of Neku's mouth tightened, and then instead of answering, his eyes fell to his phone again, face reburied in his collar. Damn. “I could say the same of you. What’s your plan?”

“How is that fair?” Joshua chuckled. “I asked you first.”

Neku’s eyebrows knitted together, and he stood. This time, he offered a hand to Joshua. Again, without deliberation, Joshua took it.

“We should get ready for today.”

“You’re dodging again,” Joshua said, “but I’ll bite. What do we have to get ready for? We don’t even know what the mission is.”

Eerily on cue, Joshua felt a sting spark on his palm and a buzz in his pocket as both timer and mission arrived. Before he produced his phone, he scanned the plaza, wondering if he could spot someone watching them, but with so many people it was impossible to tell.

Today’s mission read, _Win the Tin Pin Slammer tournament. Fail, and face erasure._

Joshua’s lip curled as he looked down at the text message. He turned to his hand, which had time enough to last them the entire day.

“…Are they joking?” he said flatly. Neku said nothing, eyes fixed down on his own phone’s mission display. Tin Pin Slammer was hardly popular enough to warrant a tournament but, Joshua reasoned, perhaps that was another thing that had changed in the span of the time he’d lost. Perhaps _aliens_ had also made first contact for all he apparently knew.

“What kind of challenge is this?” he went on. “It’s not as if flicking pins around could be considered perilous—that is, unless you’re young enough to choke on one.” That, and he’d yet to prove he could hold his own in a fight, and spending all day on a children’s game would be a waste of time better spent training for the rest of the week. Did the Reapers typically devise such mundane missions? Had the Game become easy?

“Scared you’ll lose?” Neku said, surprising him.

Joshua’s eyes narrowed, but he quickly smoothed over the furrow in his brow. “You have to have a stake in a game to be concerned with the result,” he said airily before spreading his hands. “Besides, we have no pins.”

“You’re not getting out of this that easy.” Neku sifted through his pockets to produce a handful of 6 pins—a complete set for Tin Pin Slammer. While most of the designs were unfamiliar, there were a few that Joshua recognized as Mr. H’s artwork. He and Neku seemed to be well-acquainted indeed.

“You act as if you’ve been waiting for this,” Joshua teased, appraising the pins. “Do you always keep those on hand, should the opportunity to Slam arise even posthumously?”

Neku’s eyes went wide, and Joshua cursed at himself. That hadn’t been the answer Neku had been expecting, somehow. “You don’t know what these are for? The pins?” he asked, and Joshua’s mind floundered.

Joshua quietly considered the pins in Neku’s palm for a moment. They’d been in his pocket, just like the orange cell phone in his own. Joshua put his hands in his pockets, nonchalantly re-checking them for their usual pre-death contents like a wallet or pen, but there was nothing but the cell phone. The Reapers had allotted Neku a phone, _and_ the pins.

“…You fight with pins?” Joshua guessed. “Really?”

Instead of Joshua’s answer abating him, Neku took a step closer, as agape as he’d be if Joshua had recently landed in Tokyo from somewhere far away—like the moon. “You didn’t know what they were for.”

Joshua withdrew his hands from his pockets to fold them across his chest. “Why I should be expected to know everything, I’ve no idea. And here I thought we’d agreed yesterday that the Reapers had told us _both_ everything about the Game.” He nodded accusingly at the pins. “Apparently not.”

“I can summon things from them,” Neku said, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “That’s how I fight.”

“Illuminating,” Joshua said, even though it wasn’t. “I don’t have any. So why the special treatment? Or did you smuggle them in?” He eyed Neku for a reaction, but his expression didn’t falter from _shock._

Joshua had watched Players wield a variety of objects, and while pins certainly didn’t seem like the optimal weapon, perhaps they’d become commonplace. Which begged the question of _how_ —especially since they were clearly emblazoned with Mr. H’s artwork. What connection did he have to all this? And _where the hell had he gone?_

Neku opened his phone, clearly seeking a distraction without realizing that the mission would be the only thing his screen would give him. He turned back to Joshua. “…We should practice,” he said, and Joshua had a moment to hope they might fight some Noise—giving him a chance to gauge Neku’s ability with the pins—before Neku proffered the Slammer pins to him again. “Play me at Tin Pin.”

Joshua’s nose wrinkled. “Truth be told, I’ve yet to discern what I have to offer this mission when I’m apparently partnered to the reigning pin expert of Shibuya himself. Why should I need to do anything if you’ve the experience?”

Neku opted to rebuff the compliment. “If I lose a match, you’ll have to pick up the slack. _Play me.”_

Begrudgingly, Joshua accepted the pins from Neku’s palms, and as he let his fingers trace across their surfaces, traces of energy bounced back at him. It seemed something like residue from battles, echoing against his fingers. Experimentally, Joshua tried to tap into it, perhaps summon something as Neku had described, but the pins’ psychic power remained unstirred, inert without Neku to call upon it. The pins couldn’t be so familiar with Neku, having only been used once yesterday.

Which meant Neku had to have played a Game before.

Joshua stared at the pins in his palm, mulling it over. Perhaps the connection between Neku’s pin collecting and psych training was even simpler. Maybe with Neku, Mr. H had gone a step farther than he ever had with him, and actually taught Neku how to fight. Maybe Joshua wasn’t the _unique case_ Mr. H had made him believe he was.

What had Mr. H done? What could have pulled him away from his cafe? From _Shibuya?_ From—

“Don’t tell me you can’t do it.” Neku was clearly egging him on, but Joshua judged he’d have more time to decide what to do with his new information if he gave Neku what he wanted, for now.

“I’ve done nothing of the sort,” Joshua said, curling his fingers around the pins. “Let’s begin.”

Joshua had first been introduced to Tin Pin Slammer by Mr. H, who tended to be such an early adopter of fads that Joshua more than suspected he _started_ them. And this fad, like so many that took Mr. H’s interest, had clearly taken off.

That first time, the two of them had played a few rounds, but like every other game they played together, it had quickly lost its novelty due to Mr. H’s inability to let up even a little. The man had all but singed the starter pin set he’d given Joshua to play against him with.

Neku, on the other hand, was clearly holding back. Even a newbie like Joshua could see the openings he left for his opponent to exploit, and it was insulting enough to make Joshua miss facing off against Mr. H’s wanton ruthlessness. After knocking three of his pins off the board with ease, Joshua finally shot Neku a cold glare.

“Stop that. Play me like you want to win.”

Neku held his gaze a moment, but before his expression could change, he lowered his eyes to the game again.

The next thing Joshua knew, his pin had clattered off the board. A glance up confirmed that Neku’s face had taken on a delightfully serious expression, and a smirk spread across his own. Maybe Mr. H had rubbed off on Neku, the way he rubbed off on all of Shibuya.

Joshua managed to knock out one more of Neku’s pins before he had to brace himself to be soundly beaten. With his final pin on the board, a nostalgic exhilaration kicked up the dust in his chest, and as that last pin clinked to the ground, his mind conjured the thought that he’d never tire of playing games with Neku.

“Was that your first time playing Tin Pin?” Neku asked, once it was over.

“Why should I answer that?” Joshua smiled.

“How about because I’m asking you?”

Without meaning to, their eyes locked—Neku’s searching his for something they seemed to think they could find, but Joshua still didn’t know him well enough to know what he was supposed to give, nor why he wanted to have something to give.

“Now that I’ve done what you asked, you have to answer a question of mine.”

Neku exhaled through his nose, but answered, “What?”

“Where is Mr. H?”

Something cracked behind Neku’s eyes then, and Joshua might have missed it if he hadn’t been looking to catch it. It told him enough.

“I—” Neku’s mouth wouldn’t cooperate with the rest of him. It was what had happened yesterday, but this time there was no way to swerve the sentence into something his mouth would let him speak. It seemed the Game had taken Joshua’s past, and Neku’s ability to speak of his own. But he could only let those thoughts distract him for so long.

“He’s really gone,” Joshua said softly, like a breath he’d been holding. “He’s gone.” Mr. H had never _not_ been there when he needed him. He’d never _not_ helped when he asked. And now that Joshua was in the actual Game, when everything finally mattered for once, Mr. H was supposed to be there to tell him how to not mess it all up. “That… that…” Joshua reigned himself in before he called Mr. H the word trying to claw itself from his lips, unsure if it would tarnish whatever standing he had with Neku. He still didn’t know enough about the relationship Mr. H and Neku had shared, and if calling Mr. H a _motherfucker_ would sully their pupal partnership. Even so, he had to make Neku understand. “He said he’d never leave me. He promised. _He promised.”_ Letting other words out did no good. Joshua felt his face heating, throat twisting, tears pricking at his eyes.

Mr. H had brought him salvation. He’d been the first person to understand, to look at him with eyes that believed in him, _expected_ something of him other than just disappointment or lunacy. And even when Joshua had gutted himself open to let spill the twisted, ugly desires of his heart, Mr. H’s hand had still found his shoulder, the touch streaming into him like sunlight.

And he was gone.

Joshua slapped Neku’s hand away, just before it could come to rest on his shoulder. The two of them stared at each other, Joshua furiously blinking away the tears threatening to blur his vision.

Neku pocketed his hands. “I’m sorry.”

“Did you have something to do with it?” Joshua said, accusing voice embarrassingly tenuous.

Neku’s eyes fell. He only shrugged.

Joshua pried his eyes away, gluing them to the concrete at their feet. He clenched his teeth and focused only on breathing in and out through his nose until the flames lit inside his chest had been sufficiently quashed. And yet fury still burned between his shoulder blades, like two knife wounds in his back.

The facts were this. The two of them were on their own, and instead of spending the day preparing himself and making up for yesterday’s sloppiness in battle, he would have to spend it on a children’s game that did nothing but remind him that the only person he cared about was _gone,_ and while his partner may be gifted in the children’s game department, extracting any other useful information from him would continue to be like pulling teeth on account of a Game-regulated verbal inhibition and the fact that he was likely mourning, again, _the only person Joshua cared about._

The facts were this, and he would get used to them.

“Joshua.”

_“What.”_

Neku was crouched beside him. Joshua couldn’t recall when he’d lowered himself to sit on the curb, nor why his limbs had grown so heavy. “I’ll take care of the tournament. You can sit this one out.”

“I’m not _infirm,_ Neku.”

Neku ignored this, which was perhaps wise. “The mission doesn’t say which of us has to win, and even though you’re good—” Joshua felt a fleeting flicker of pride at that. “—you’re not ready.”

Joshua allowed himself to consider this. Neku was skilled, and if there was some sort of Reaper’s trick lurking behind all this—a Slammer pin that would summon a Noise to attack them, for example—then Neku might be best equipped to deal with it. Even so, the odds still weren’t quite to Joshua’s liking. “…We shouldn’t just ensure that you win,” he said eventually. “We should also ensure that the others lose.”

Neku’s response was only an uncharacteristic, brief laugh. “What do you have against a little insurance?” Joshua asked, since Neku clearly wasn’t taking him seriously. “There’s nothing in the mission that stipulates we need to win _fairly.”_ But the smile only tightened across Neku’s face.

 _“What?”_ Joshua folded his arms.

Neku’s jaw ground like it needed its hinges oiled. _This_ again. “Nothing,” he managed stiffly. “You just reminded me of—someone.” Neku’s lips parted in what might have been a grin, or a grimace. “They were a real prick.”

The two of them played against each other for a few more rounds of Tin Pin before the tournament's start time approached, and Joshua focused on channeling everything he was feeling into the small, stupid discs of metal. It would be no use to get into an argument now—not with the success of today’s mission riding entirely on Neku’s shoulders. The one saving grace was that they might still have some time left over to come to blows _after_ the tournament.

“How are you even going to cheat?” Neku asked, still practicing what he claimed was a _signature move_. “We won’t be invisible inside the building.”

“That’s for me to know, and you to find out.” Unable to test it properly in battle, Joshua had turned to exploring the functions of his cell phone between matches, and he was of the belief that he could wield the cell’s psych delicately enough to damage an opponent’s pin before it was moved into play, as long as he was close enough and maintained focus. In fact, Neku was about to attempt to play a pin that Joshua was confident would spring itself off the board when he tried to use it—that is, if it didn’t explode first.

“Comforting,” Neku grumbled, just before a third party let out a wailing groan beside them.

“Ughhh! Are you two just going to play patty-cake all day or what?!”

The partners turned their attention to a woman who had appeared to perch on top of a nearby street railing. She wore a dark lace shirt woven with vicious-looking swirled patterns, and her hair was dyed a shade of pink obnoxious enough to match her lipstick. Or perhaps she’d chosen the obnoxious shade of lipstick to match the obnoxious color of her hair.

At her back loomed a set of inky black wings, built like a wrought iron fence.

“To what do we owe the pleasure of a Reaper’s presence?” Joshua said, taking Neku’s lapse in attention—for he was looking at the Reaper the same way he might a sizable wad of pink bubblegum stuck to his precious headphones—as an opening to slam his pin off the board.

“Why are you here?” Neku ground through his teeth.

“Why aren’t you _doing_ anything?” she shot back. “I’m being bored to tears out here!” She folded her arms, swiveling away from them as if she were on a barstool. “I think it’s about time you two saw some action.” All told, Joshua couldn’t disagree.

Neku, who hadn’t let them enter a single battle today, looked furious enough to set something on fire with his mind, but the Reaper ignored him. “And before you ask—GM’s orders!” With a swipe of her sharply-manicured fingers she summoned a Noise sigil to hover in the air beside her. It wasn’t too intricate—likely a mid-level Noise at most, and surely enough for the two of them to handle. “It’s way past time to liven things up in here anyway~”

“That’s _not—”_ Neku managed before she flung the sigil at them, phasing both of them into their respective battle planes.

As the Noise took form before him, this time Joshua wasted no time in pulling out his phone. When he flipped it open, its power unfolded to him like it had yesterday, sending out signals that strung each button to objects he could see scattering the city street. He needed only lace the signals together with sequences of buttons, and they would respond to his call.

The Noise—a small huddle of penguins—were already preparing to attack, but they certainly seemed preferable to the wolf they’d faced yesterday. Experimentally, Joshua pressed a series of buttons on his phone, which summoned a roadside railing to crash down on the nearest Noise and send it staggering back into its fellows.

“Now we’re talking.” As abilities went, this would suit him just fine. Joshua sidestepped to avoid a splash of water as a penguin slid by.

“Watch yourself!” Neku’s voice came through from the other side of the battle plane, and Joshua watched the Noise he’d hit burst into static as Neku finished it off.

“I’m sorry, are you my keeper?” Joshua was already dialing in a sequence to rain traffic cones down on the next penguin. He’d been waiting for this battle all day, and he wasn’t going to let Neku begrudge him for letting off a little steam.

“You’ll get hurt!” Neku blasted the next one away.

“Do you care about me all that much?” Joshua was quickly acclimatizing to the full battle functions of the cell phone, and sent a bike rack’s worth of bicycles slamming into a Noise that had gotten too close.

“Shit…!” Joshua heard Neku curse, just before his chest pricked with residual damage from a pin that had just exploded on Neku’s end of their link. Joshua’s Tin Pin Slammer sabotage would need more work after all.

The distraction, however, left an opening for the last penguin to slide into him, splashing Joshua with a crashing wall of water just before Neku recovered enough to erase it and end the battle.

The battle plane faded, but Joshua was left standing, sopping wet, before Neku and the Reaper. As soon as she caught sight of him, she let out a shrill, cackling laugh before doubling backwards in midair. “Oh, you don’t _know_ how long I’ve wanted to do that!” she said, gasping for breath.

Neku said something, but Joshua didn’t hear it. He snapped his phone closed as the fury he’d felt at Mr. H cascaded upon him again, this time with fuller force, lighting up across his back until the world was rendered in nothing but shades of black and white.

“Uh-oh.” The Reaper folded herself backwards to vanish into a Noise plane just before a massive object crashed down where she’d been floating.

Joshua blinked at the large vending machine now embedded in the sidewalk, confusion washing the rage from his head. His limbs were heavy and immovable as his fingers ran along the side of his phone—it had been closed, and he hadn’t pressed any buttons. It was also completely _dry,_ just like the rest of him.

Neku stepped forward, and leaned to retrieve what looked like a piece of paper from the rubble. As he rose, Joshua saw that it wasn’t paper, but an unreal-looking white feather, flickering slightly with distortion.

Neku turned to him then, with a blazing, righteous expression that Joshua did not understand. The feather soon sputtered out like a flame, vanishing in his fingers, but in its last burst of power the light it cast on Neku's face made him look like something sublime.

The tournament was no problem after that. Neku turned out to be nearly as ruthless as Mr. H, and Joshua didn’t even need to employ any sabotage. He wouldn’t have trusted himself anyway—not now.

They hardly spoke after the vending machine, which, for once, suited him fine. His body felt like lead. He had no explanation for what he’d done, and his reckless loss of control had left him shameful and shaken. He just watched on, silent, as Neku was crowned the winner of the tournament, and tried to make note of how familiarly all the other entrants seemed to behave towards him. The sensation of the timer lifting from his hand brought him back to himself only slightly.

“Hey!!” A spiky-haired teen approached him, wrenching Joshua out of the remnants of his reverie. He had a red headband tied around his head and the air of a sentai character before they put on their suit. “You catch that last move?! Neku’s in a league of his own!”

“He comes here often, then?” Joshua responded automatically, even as his eyes flicked to the heavy-looking tournament signboard hanging above them.

The easily-excitable teen shook his head, sending the headband whipping around and nearly smacking Joshua in the face. “It’s been _ages_ since I’ve seen him here, but he’s just as good as always!”

Joshua was trying to steel himself against more rage, but it continued to come far too easily today. “How long has he been playing?”

The teen frowned slightly. “Huh? Don’t you know? I thought—”

“Joshua.” Neku materialized at his side just in time to rescue the eager teen from the looming signboard threatening to knock the headband off his head. “Let’s go.”

The world around Joshua blurred, the next words from the teen lost in a fog as Neku’s hand on his arm guided him out of the tournament venue. They barely made it outside before blackness subsumed his mind again, dragging the rest of the day away from him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me writing this: wait hold on this fucking loser doesn’t know how pins work ahahaha
> 
> Uzuki and Shooter had some close calls today but maybe Joshua will be less cranky after a little nap
> 
> Speculation corner: I rly rly like the idea that Joshua and Mr. H got the idea for psych pins from Tin Pin Slammer, and before that Players fought a lot like Neku’s partners—just using psychs on whatever objects were available to them. Also Mr. H is impossible to beat at anything, even Mario Kart. Especially Mario Kart
> 
> Lastly I think that Composers don’t have wings because their wings are clipped to keep them from leaving their city, which is also why Joshua can’t jump in battle.
> 
> By the time you read this, who knows, I might be losing my mind on twitter [here](https://twitter.com/toppiegames) over twewy news


	3. Day 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Chemex is a brand name and TWEWY changes brand names so it’s called a Kemex in this)

Today Joshua woke slowly—the thrilling dread of being dead could only flood him with adrenaline so many times, after all. He took his time in stirring, first taking stock of the way his body felt. The sleep had been of some relief, but the heaviness that had dogged him the past few days still sat inside him, settled in his muscles. It seemed threaded through him so deeply that his body might have been in the process of calcifying from disuse, and Joshua wondered if he’d even lived the years he’d lost, or if he’d just been shelved somewhere, waiting as a pawn waits for hands to move it onto a chess board and into play.

His eyes opened slowly to find that he’d been put in the same spot as yesterday—on the concrete near Hachiko—and only once he’d worked his way to his feet did he look for Neku. His partner was seated on one of the metal bars that ringed the concrete planters near Hachiko, eyes already watching him like a fox. He stood.

“They could at least put us up in a capsule hotel, couldn’t they?” Joshua called as Neku came to join him. “And why do you always wake before me?”

“Maybe I’m just not as slow as you.”

Joshua chuckled. “I guess you proved that yesterday at the Slam-Off. Very impressive, by the way.”

The easy expression that had begun to show on Neku’s face blew away like a tumbling flyer, and he pulled out his phone. “No mission yet.”

Joshua watched him, frowning. “So am I correct to assume that we’ll just go on changing subjects on and on until we end up talking about, say, Edogawa Ranpo’s influence on the local literary canon? If so, I’d rather we just start there.”

“Do you want to go to the café today?”

That caught Joshua off-guard. He had to stop himself from answering immediately, realizing the question was just yet another subject change. He instead counted to five, then checked his own phone to be sure there wasn’t a mission. Neku was right.

“You said the café was gone,” Joshua decided to answer. And when Neku didn’t follow, he added, “On the first day you said he was gone like the café was.”

Neku sighed heavily. “I meant—the café is still there, it’s just closed.”

“So why didn’t you just say that at the time?” Joshua needled, though he didn’t particularly care about the semantics. If he could search the café for clues, then Neku’s woeful grasp on language wouldn’t matter.

As if on cue, Neku’s jaw locked again, and he let out a frustrated growl in lieu of a response to the question. Now this was interesting—Mr. H was part of his past, and the café was certainly part of that, but he could apparently speak about it in some ways without triggering the parameters of his Entry Fee.

“I’d ask _what_ it is you can’t talk about,” Joshua said, still eyeing him, “but then round and round we’d go until I was bored and your face had turned the same color as your shirt.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Neku said, proving that he could tell lies just fine, which was even more interesting. If that was the case, then a good lie could surely communicate anything Neku wanted him to know, Entry Fee be damned, but unfortunately Neku wasn’t the half of their partnership who’d been blessed with the art.

“Was I intended to buy that?” Joshua sighed.

“Can we just _go?”_ Neku swept a hand in the direction of the café. More bewildering than the reticence was the fact that he was doing exactly what Joshua wanted. In fact, if Neku hadn’t agreed to let him visit Cat Street soon, Joshua might have considered faking a mission text to spur them towards it. He was thankful that Neku had brought it up himself, because Joshua had the feeling he probably wouldn’t have fallen for it anyway. If Neku had ever been gullible, he wasn’t anymore.

Joshua shrugged as if he was conceding. “All right, have it your way.”

Joshua led the way to Cat Street, which was farther from Hachiko than they’d strayed so far this week. He was hopeful he’d feel better once he got moving, but even after minutes of walking the heaviness in his body refused to leave him. The phantom weight seemed focused near his shoulders, like he was carrying something heavy on his back, yet there was nothing to be weighing him down but his breezy cotton shirt.

Moreover, he was losing confidence with each turn through the streets. Shibuya had changed since he’d been gone, in little ways that he hadn’t taken the time to notice before. A boutique he’d shopped at was now filled with fashions of a different style; a takoyaki stand now sold crepes.

The people were different, too—modern in ways Joshua couldn’t quite grasp. They shone bright and alien, moving faster than him even while standing still, and Neku fit in so well among them that he almost looked alive. He began to outpace Joshua as they walked, and his feet met the streets as if his footsteps had been imprinted upon them deep enough to mold the concrete.

A deep, jealous, strangling sorrow took hold of Joshua to know that the city that was meant to be his had turned into a stranger.

Needing a moment to breathe, Joshua stalled under an overpass at a small splash of graffiti that looked like CAT’s. He could tell that it wasn’t, but the artist had created a passable emulation, which he supposed was commendable. Even without CAT, the artist’s influence on the city could still be felt.

“What do you think?” Neku had stopped beside him.

“About the graffiti?” Joshua asked. Neku nodded. “Do I look like an art student?”

Neku suppressed a smile. “Do you want the answer to that?”

Joshua scoffed, rolling his eyes before turning to gesture at the piece. “…It looks like CAT’s, but it’s not.” Joshua would’ve known Mr. H’s art anywhere. “Probably just a fan.”

“Yeah.” Neku looked at the art too, eyes tracing the arcs like they were streets on a familiar map. It was then that Joshua noticed a small signature in paint marker that looked like a stick-legged bird sporting a hairstyle similar to Neku’s. “Just a fan.”

There were depths in his eyes Joshua still couldn’t plumb—wells of knowledge that Joshua wanted to drain until he knew the meaning of every beat of his partner’s heart.

“Neku,” Joshua said, “you wouldn’t happen to know the perpetrator of this vandalism, would you?”

“No,” Neku said easily, turning away from the graffiti to continue down the sidewalk. “Vandalism’s illegal.”

When Joshua saw that the WildKat sign hadn’t been replaced, he had time to hope that Neku had been wrong or that he’d managed to be a better liar than Joshua had initially given him credit for. But each step that brought him closer to the café seemed like a call without an answer, a cell phone left to ring, and as he reached the door, Joshua’s hope faded out like a dial tone. The street had once been charged with an optimism in the scent of coffee, and Mr. H had taken it all with him.

The shop windows were intact, of course, but Joshua felt like the world was shattering all around him. Without Mr. H, looking into the empty café was like peering into a coffin.

He needed to see the bones for himself.

“It’s locked,” Neku said when Joshua put his hand on the handle, but Joshua was already pulling on the door, which opened without resistance like it always had. The scent that hit him was different, though—rather than the warmth of fresh coffee and pastries, it was more like leafing through an old book that the previous owner had spilled stale coffee on, years back.

Joshua turned back to find a dumbstruck Neku, who had to take several more moments to recover from witnessing Joshua’s feat of _opening the door_. Finally, Neku closed his eyes slowly and let a breath out his nose. “Figures.”

“You didn’t try it?”

The flares off the look Neku shot him told him that he either hadn’t, or that he had. Very, very hard. Joshua looked back to inspect the door, and smiled as he watched a glowing, tangled sigil fading beneath where his fingers still held the handle. It brightened him to know that Mr. H had left a barrier that only he could unlock. He opened the door wide for Neku. “After you.”

Neku all but bolted inside, but didn’t get far before coming to a stiff-legged stop. Joshua followed after, preemptively commending himself for how composed he was being, but then he saw what Neku was staring at.

On Joshua’s favorite table to sit—the one closest to the counter where Mr. H brewed coffee—there sat a single piece of paper, with the café owner’s undeniable scrawl. It read only,

_Back in a jiff._

The two of them stood shoulder to shoulder, saying nothing. An arrow on the paper indicated that there was another side, but Joshua couldn’t move. He heard Neku’s sharp intake of breath before he reached and turned it over.

_Be good._

Neku and Joshua quietly stared at the simple note as if it wasn’t sending both of their worlds into tailspins. The thread that strung their souls together as Partners was often tenuous, scarcely felt outside of battle, but all at once it had gone tangible and taught, and beside him Joshua could feel Neku’s heart clenched as tightly as his own. They were suspended for a moment in a complete synchronization of grief, but then Neku broke away, and began to search.

Joshua lowered himself to sit at the table.

_Be good._

His eyes had gone too blurry to see, but he was vaguely aware of rustling around him as Neku tried opening drawers, moving paintings, and rifling through shelves for some other sign, some other message. He stopped near Joshua, about to say something when he seemed to think better of it.

“Can we just… sit here for a while?” Joshua said, for once not caring what his voice sounded like.

Neku put his hand on the back of the opposite chair, like it was a stand-in for Joshua’s shoulder. “…Yeah.”

He sat down next to Joshua, and eventually proffered a napkin dispenser. It seemed miraculous that it had napkins in it—Mr. H never remembered to refill them. “Here,” Neku prompted, and Joshua realized Neku was trying to get him to take one.

“Thank you.” Joshua pulled out several napkins, and began a valiant attempt to get the fluids coming out of his face under control. He didn’t have the energy to be embarrassed, or even angry—he’d spent all of it yesterday. Not to mention, he kept feeling odd twinges from Neku’s end of their link, and figured he was probably doing Neku a charity by letting out enough tears for both of them.

Neku focused on the note, looking as if he could ignite it to reveal a line of invisible ink if he stared at it hard enough. Eventually, Joshua raised his eyes to the café counter, still lined with clean mugs. “…I should have paid more attention when he made it.”

“What would he make you?”

“House blend. But made in the… glass vessel, instead of the machine.”

“It’s called a Kemex,” Neku mumbled, just before he stood and walked around the counter to the small kitchen. Snide comments rose in Joshua’s mind, but for once none of them made it out his mouth. “He only ever served me drip coffee,” Neku said from where he’d ducked under the counter to rummage through the cupboards. “Full price.”

“Well, naturally.” Joshua nearly laughed. “He charged me extra.”

Neku reappeared with the hourglass-shaped glass vessel—a Kemex, presumably—which he set on the counter, and a sealed bag of coffee beans that he was examining suspiciously. Joshua didn’t care if they were expired or stale, but Neku turned the bag over to reveal a sigil drawn in thick marker. It looked something like a clock, and when Neku ripped the bag open, the sigil sparked and vanished like the embers off a match. He sniffed the bag’s contents, muttered “Of course they’re fresh,” and then set it next to the Kemex.

Neku filled Mr. H’s stylish, long-necked electric kettle with water and set it to boil, then ground the beans with a vintage-style hand crank. Mr. H’s tools of the trade could be described as eclectic, ranging from modern to antique, but Joshua couldn’t deny that each one had been transfigured into a work of art in the café owner’s hands. Neku wasn’t doing too badly himself.

Once the water was hot and the beans properly ground, Neku used the kettle to wet the Kemex’s paper filter. He then scooped a portion of ground coffee into it, and poured the hot water over it to steep, moving the kettle up and down and swirling the stream of water just as Mr. H had.

Joshua’s eyes, which he’d managed to keep dry thus far, went wet the moment the scent reached him. The first day he’d smelled this coffee had been another day spent lost in a tangle of streets he couldn’t understand, able to do nothing but watch the Players and Noise tearing each other to static. When a Game was running, most days the only thing that had kept Joshua from giving up entirely was the knowledge that if he did, the nightmare he’d been watching would start all over, this time with him inside it.

But then he’d smelled this coffee, and it had brought him to the café, into a world that helped him understand his own. Joshua may have been able to see the Game, but Mr. H had been the one to tell him about the figures behind the scenes, the backstage players who ran its functions and devised its rules. In the process, Mr. H had, knowingly or unknowingly, instilled in Joshua the dream that he could take its throne, and change it to function by his own design.

Joshua wasn’t sure if he wanted to become Composer anymore.

The coffee that Mr. H had kept frozen in time dripped from the Kemex’s upper chamber and down into the bottom, seconds in an hourglass finally allowed to move again, but Joshua felt more stiff and frozen than ever. If the Game had taken time from him, made him into someone Shibuya didn’t recognize, then why also chain him to it with this weight? What had been done to his body while his mind was gone?

Neku placed the coffee before him, then sat down at the table with a cup of his own.

Joshua took the cup and breathed in the steam wafting off it, suddenly feeling as alive as he’d ever been. He let his eyes drift closed, and drank. Each layer of flavor unfolded on his tongue like buried pages of memory, from breaths of citrus to a deep, dark mocha that left behind a bitter, lingering chocolate.

Joshua hadn’t expected it to be the same—it couldn’t be—but it was close enough that he had to clear his throat of oncoming tears before he was able to say, “Did he teach you how to brew?”

Neku’s eyes were distant as he lowered his cup and shook his head. “I’ve just been trying to understand.” The present tense made it sound like Neku didn’t consider himself dead. “Why he liked it so much. So far all I’ve got is a caffeine addiction.”

Joshua’s eyes fell into his cup before Neku could see them. “He told me coffee was the one thing he could never quite master.” He chuckled. “That there was always something the beans kept hiding from him.”

Neku snorted into his cup. “Wasn’t he supposed to be the one who had it all figured out?”

They sat together at the table, sipping their coffee as they lapsed into another stretch of silence. Eventually, Joshua decided it was time to break it.

“Can you tell me why we haven’t gotten a mission yet?”

Neku’s mouth vanished into his collar as he set down his cup. “Why would I know that?”

Joshua took another sip. “You’re involved somehow. At the very least, you’ve played a Game before.”

Neku took a moment to center himself before he raised his eyes and said, “No, I haven’t.”

Maybe Joshua could make a liar of him yet.

Neku washed the Kemex and cleaned the grinder, then scrubbed out their cups and put them on the drying rack, as if Mr. H would be there to chide them if they left a mess in the café while he was out. Joshua knew that they would have to go soon, continue with the Game, but moving from this table had become unfathomable.

“Let’s go,” Neku said once he’d finished cleaning.

“No.”

“Joshua…”

If Neku could lie, then Joshua supposed he could tell him a truth or two. “I can’t stand.” He traced his finger around a water stain on the table. So far, momentum had been enough to help him ignore the weight threaded into his bones, but he’d rolled to a definite stop, legs turned to lead. “It’s been hard for me to move my body since we began.”

“Since we started the Game?” Neku’s face had abandoned its begrudging sympathy and returned to where it seemed most at ease: somewhere between anger and concern. “Why didn’t you _say_ something?”

“Why didn’t you tell me you’d played a Game before?” Joshua retorted. “We could do this all day Neku, but it’d hardly be productive.”

Neku’s hands had balled into fists, but he shoved them into his pockets. “So what? What are you going to do about it? Sit there until the day’s over?”

“Obviously not.”

“Then _what,”_ Neku said through his teeth.

“I want you to help me up.”

Neku looked as if the words had taken form and slapped him.

“Is that such a surprise?”

Neku’s expression made it clear that it was.

“We’re Partners, if you recall,” Joshua continued. “And Partners trust each other.” He extended his palm. “So I’m asking you to give me a hand.”

After a moment more, Neku did. As their hands made contact, Joshua tugged on the thread of their Pact—the link that strung their souls together—searching out energy could draw from Neku, but he soon hit up against a wall. Neku was blocking him.

“Can’t you ever just say what you really want?” Neku snapped as he tugged Joshua to his feet. The gesture, however, did nothing to change the fact that he still _hurt,_ and Joshua was about to stumble when Neku’s end of the link opened up to him like a floodgate, washing him with energy. The surge of power into his soul dulled the aching weight to mere stiffness, and far from the first time, Joshua wondered exactly what his Partner was capable of.

“We’re leaving,” Neku said, with little room for debate. They were still holding hands, and Joshua risked Neku taking back the energy he’d given if he protested.

Joshua looked back at the café counter, letting his eyes trace along it as if burning it to memory, then let his gaze fall at last upon the note. Joshua reached for the napkin dispenser, and pulled out a fresh one.

“Do you have a pen?”

Neku released his hand and soon produced a thick paint marker from his pocket—the kind you could use to scribble graffiti on concrete. Based on the hollowish sound it made when Neku shook it, it’d seen a lot of use.

“All this time, I’ve been in the company of a vandal after all,” Joshua said, taking the marker from him.

“Better than being in the company of _you.”_

“Oh, I’m well aware of what that’s like.” Insufferable.

Careful not to let the ink bleed through the napkin and onto the table, Joshua delicately wrote,

_Call me._

_\- J_

And, in an addendum penned only in his head, _Bastard._

Neku took back the pen and said, “Ready?”

“Yes.” They weren’t linked anymore, but they’d both agreed on one thing. It was time to leave this ghost behind them.

The door swung shut behind them as they left the building, its handle reilluminating with the sigil as the café sealed itself shut again. A moment later both their phones buzzed with missions as if they’d just stepped out of a dead zone. The mission read,

_Defeat the specter of Cat Street._

“Ominous,” Joshua commented. There was no time limit or other conditions listed. Was this Game Master just too lazy to draft a proper mission mail every day?

“I’ll try scanning.” Neku activated his Player Pin, and said only, “Oh,” before an enormous white Noise symbol seeped into the air before them like frost creeping across invisible crevices in the sky. Then its feathery tendrils pulled free of the flat symbol, and dragged them into the battle plane.

As Joshua and Neku shifted into their respective fields, their connection was markedly stronger than it had been yesterday. However, before Joshua could reflect on the bonding power and combat benefits of shared grief, a flayed cry ripped through the battle plane and the Noise began to take form.

It rose before him like an encroaching blizzard, vast and white until twin voids ripped open at its center, forming two black eyes with searing red slits. The Noise had the outline of a cat, but its fur was built of white feathers that drifted off it like ghostly petals from a tree. Its eyes held him as if pinned between two mirrors that faced each other in an endless corridor of reflection.

Joshua was unable to move. He couldn’t look away from it any more than he could look away from the deepest truths of reality, from the answers to every question he’d ever asked. The Noise seemed a memory manifest, but instead of playing him the time he’d lost in full moving color, it bleached his vision until everything beyond its edges had been whited out into nothingness.

Far away, a voice like Neku’s was yelling, and pressure like rain was hitting his body. The weight of it dragged him down, pulling him into a blank, empty sea where he sank like a rock.

_But Neku…_

Dark seams opened across the endless expanse of white, ripping it apart into streaks of static that crackled away to reveal blurry splashes of orange and purple and black.

Hands were around his shoulders and his back was on the asphalt. “—shua! _Joshua!”_ Neku was tugging hard on their link now, as if it were a lifeline pulling Joshua up from the bowels of the earth. Joshua’s hazy mind couldn’t find the point in the effort.

“What was that?” Joshua slurred.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Neku sounded so upset.

“Did you erase it yourself?” Joshua’s eyes wouldn’t focus, no matter how he squinted and blinked. White shapes continued to dance across his sight.

“What happened to you?” Neku's habit of dodging questions wasn’t one Joshua enjoyed.

“With power like that, you could win this whole Game,” Joshua managed. “Why waste your time with dead weight like me?” He chuckled to himself at the pun, which hurt.

“We’re _partners,_ Joshua,” Neku choked. “I’m not giving up on you.”

Joshua’s vision finally recovered enough to find that Neku’s eyes were filled with tears, and Joshua knew he had seen them there before.

Neku phased into the Dead God’s Pad, fuming. “Kariya, what the hell was that?”

The Game Master was reclined in a lounge chair, and didn’t look up from his book. “An amalgamative Noise formed from residual Soul lingering in the layers of Cat Street,” he said cooly. “I set up a channeling formula on the sidewalk to gather up whatever leftovers were still hanging around there, and used them to make a boss for you. You’re welcome.”

“How—” Neku stammered. “How the _hell_ did you know how to do that?”

Kariya’s eyes met Neku’s from above his glasses. “C’mon, Phones, have a little faith in me.” He gave a casual shrug. “Was a lot easier than summoning something wholesale or—pass—actually going toe-to-toe with you two myself.” He returned to his book, like the matter was settled.

“Get up. There’s something wrong with him.”

Kariya’s posture straightened, but only slightly. “Something wrong like what?”

“Your goddamn _Noise._ Seeing it gave him an—episode.”

“Isn’t that what you wanted?” Kariya asked, as close to accusingly as someone like Kariya ever got. “Isn’t that the point of all this? To trigger something?”

Neku shook his head furiously. “He’s _different._ He told me he’s in pain—” It was useless to try and keep his voice indifferent, but he was trying all the same. “He said his body feels heavy and hard to move, but I can’t tell what’s wrong with it.”

Kariya closed his eyes briefly before setting down his book and pulling himself up out of the lounge chair. “All right, let’s have a look.”

The two of them shifted to the plane they kept Players in between missions, where Neku had left Joshua’s Soul in stasis. He hadn’t been able to find any damage to it, and nothing seemed to be missing beyond the Entry Fee they’d taken, but there had to be _something_ he wasn’t seeing.

Kariya leaned down to examine the Soul, lollipop stick moving thoughtfully.

"Did They do something to him?” Neku asked. “Something that would've made him—“

"Phones, They changed the packaging. Not what's inside the box."

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Composers get their wings clipped.” Kariya took the lollipop from his mouth in the same way someone else might take a drag from a cigarette. “Keeps them in their City.”

Neku should have been expecting it, because it made sense, but the concept hit him like an attack from behind—cruel and leaden. Kariya traced his finger along the swirling white lines of Joshua’s sigils, stopping at a place Neku hadn’t noticed before. There, the smooth lines had strange seams in light grey instead of white. “He’s still bearing the scars on his Soul."

 _Composers get their wings clipped._ They had nowhere to run, and no choice but to fall back down to earth, into the city that would be their grave.

Neku replayed his first week with Joshua, dredging up all the petty complaints and jabs that still itched at the back of his mind whenever he thought about him. Joshua had seemed to take pleasure in remarking whenever Neku was moving too fast, trying too hard, but now all his infuriating comments began to reconfigure themselves into a new context. Neku clenched his fists. If _that_ Joshua had felt the weight too, Neku would never know, because _that_ Joshua hadn’t trusted him enough to tell him.

This Joshua had.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Neku running into the dead god's pad like "kariya fuck help fuck"
> 
> Before I wrote & researched for this chapter I knew like, 2 things about coffee but now I'm sitting here with extensive knowledge like "maybe I should buy some nice coffee beans... do I want a chemex?? hmm I'd also need a gooseneck kettle.." much to think about
> 
> Neku's graffiti signature is a doodle he came up with when he was like 11 that he still uses to this day
> 
> Also Kariya is astoundingly competent but ONLY when he's forced to try


End file.
